Tag Archives: Joaquín Guzmán Loera

Post navigation

Mazatlán, Sinaloa – In less than 24 hours another woman, who is yet to be identified, was found dead. This time a body was found early in the morning at about 0048 hours on the street José María Morelos in the cummunity of Hogar del Pescador..

This is the second execution of a woman in the area in less than 24 hours.

Next to the body, the killers left a white cardboard with the following message: “THIS IS GOING TO HAPPENED TO ALL THE HALCONES THAT SUPPORT GENTE NUEVA AND WATCH YOUR BACK FEDERAL POLICE AND ELITES CHUY TONO AND POLANCO, YOU ARE ON THE LIST OF ZETAS AND BELTRANES.

Who is behind the killings of Zetas — another drug gang or agents acting on behalf of the government or military? An ad hoc group whose presence is being tolerated by authorities as well as the public?

Coastal Veracruz, the gateway to Mexico for centuries of immigrants from Europe and beyond, a laid-back beachfront vacation spot for legions of Mexicans, has in recent months become the latest state to be thoroughly sucked into the deadly and devastating drug war.

On Sept. 20, nearly three dozen half-naked bodies were dumped in broad daylight on a busy highway underpass in a well-to-do tourist area of the city of Veracruz. Fourteen more turned up a few days later — during a convention of the nation’s top state and federal prosecutors. Then, on Oct. 6, barely 48 hours after announcing a major security offensive, military and police found an additional 36 bodies, and 10 more turned up the following day.

In videotaped presentations, a group of masked men with military bearing has claimed responsibility for the spate of killings, portraying it as a cleansing operation. Many of the bodies had a “Z” for Zeta written on the back with ink marker, a witness said.

The mystery group announced that it was in Veracruz State as “the armed branch of the people, and for the people.”

“We are asking officials and authorities who support the Zetas to stop doing so, and let the armed forces know that our only objective is to finish the Zetas,” the spokesman for the group told the camera. “We are anonymous warriors, without faces, proudly Mexican.”

For years with the Zetas tightly in charge, and the public terrified into submission, the state had stayed relatively calm. But months ago, traffickers associated with top drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman are believed to have moved in from the north with an eye toward seizing territory from the Zetas, who had long controlled Veracruz’s valuable routes for smuggling drugs, migrants and contraband.

The “Zeta killers” burst on to the scene shortly before President Felipe Calderon deployed fresh military forces into Veracruz this month.

Their sudden rise and the surgical precision with which the killers systematically picked off nearly 100 people in 17 days has led to conjecture among some people that they may be operating with implicit or direct support of the government or military. Some suggest that the June kidnapping, torture and killing of three marine cadets in Veracruz might have propelled the marine corps to begin acting outside the law. Officials dismiss such speculation, and others wonder why a group aspiring to be a clandestine death squad would post videos on YouTube.

Indeed, some point to Guzman’s Sinaloa network, and say the military look to the killings may be an attempt to deflect attention.

If that’s true, the Zeta killers would simply be the latest of the many cartel-affiliated paramilitary gangs that have been fighting in Mexico since the beginning of the offensive that Calderon launched against the cartels at the start of his administration nearly five years ago.

The Zetas themselves started as the private military arm of the Gulf cartel, hired gunmen recruited from army elite forces to fight and kill the cartel’s enemies. They evolved into a full-fledged trafficking cartel after splitting violently from their former patrons.

Vigilante gangs purporting to be defending society and working with some level of official complicity have frequently acted in Mexico in recent years. La Familia in Michoacan, which surged in Calderon’s southwestern home state in 2005, claimed that it was protecting residents from the Zetas.

In 2009, Mauricio Fernandez, mayor of the affluent city of San Pedro Garza Garcia near the northern industrial hub of Monterrey, announced the formation of “intelligence squads” to “cleanse” his jurisdiction of criminals. One particularly notorious thug turned up dead in short order.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the expanding drug war since December 2006, when it began, according to government intelligence figures.

The government of Veracruz has sought to minimize the horror the state is living, or cast it as part of a broader national phenomenon for which local officials are not responsible.

Yet state officials have only exacerbated the uncertainty and suspicion by hiding information on new fatalities and claiming with excessive haste that most of the first batch of 35 dead were criminals. In fact, neither Gov. Javier Duarte nor state Atty. Gen. Reynaldo Escobar, who made those claims, had that information. The city’s top newspaper, Notiver, later reported that the majority did not have criminal records. Escobar has since been forced to resign.

“Where is the government? What is happening here? What is it all about?”

Drug Cartels in Mexico have a long history, to stop them we must understand their History! Who they are, where they reside and what they do. By understanding the enemy we can prevail!

The Tijuana Cartel is based in one of the most strategically important border towns in Mexico, and continues to export drugs even after being weakened from a brutal internal war during 2009. Due to infighting, arrests and deaths of some of its top members, the Tijuana Cartel is a shell of what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s when it was considered one of the most potent and violent criminal organizations in Mexico. After the arrest or assassination of its founding members, the Arellano Felix clan, the cartel is now headed by Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the Arellano Felix brothers who once bloodied Mexico and southern California with their brutish and authoritarian style. With the powerful Sinaloa Cartel moving into Tijuana in force, Sanchez Arellano is struggling to keep a grip on this lucrative drug and human trafficking corridor.

Despite its name, the Guadalajara Cartel is from Sinaloa. Its members left their homeland during a military offensive in the late 1970s the region that included mass arrests and a fumigation campaign. Amidst the offensive, police shot and killed Aviles but a young, upstart Sinaloan named Joaquin Guzman Loera quickly took his place. After working for years with Felix Gallardo, Guzman would form the Sinaloa Cartel. The other members of the group were grooming their own replacements: Fonseca’s nephews were Amado and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes who would later create the Juarez Cartel; Felix Gallardo’s nephews were Benjamín, Ramon, Rafael, Javier, Eduardo (their brothers Luis Fernando and Carlos reportedly did not participate), the core of the future Tijuana Cartel. Meanwhile, the military campaign failed: marijuana and poppy production remained prominent in the area, as well as the neighboring states of Durango and Chihuahua. To be sure, the tri-state region, or so-called “Golden Triangle,” has long represented the power base of the Sinaloans in the drug trade.

After shifting operations to Guadalajara, the group began working closely with the Colombian traffickers who were starting to move cocaine in large quantities through the isthmus. Guadalajara’s stature rose, as did law enforcement efforts to dismantle it. In the early 1980s, a veteran Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent named Enrique Camarena began gathering evidence to prosecute the cartel members. Shortly after Camarena had helped Mexican authorities destroy a large marijuana field, cartel operatives kidnapped and killed him. The US began a massive manhunt and pressured Mexico to do the same. Caro Quintero was arrested in April 1985 in Costa Rica. Felix Gallardo remained at large for years but was arrested in April 1989.

From jail, Felix Gallardo called a meeting in Acapulco and divvied up the territories: Guzman and his partner, Hector Luis Palma Salazar, would get parts of Baja California and Sonora; Rafael Aguilar Guajardo would get from Juarez to Nuevo Laredo (the Carrillo Fuentes brothers would later take over this route); the Arellano Felix brothers would get Tijuana. However, almost from the beginning the Arellano Felix brothers were after more. In 1989, shortly after Felix Gallardo was jailed, Ramon Felix Arellano killed a close associate of Guzman in Sinaloa.

The fight quickly spread. In November 2002, gunmen sprayed bullets into a Puerto Vallarta nightclub where Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix had gone. Nine people died; Benjamin and Ramon reportedly escaped through an air duct. In May 1993, the Arellano Felix brother sent gunmen to intercept Guzman at the Guadalajara airport, striking and killing a Mexican Cardinal instead. Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix was arrested by Mexican authorities in 1993. But after Guzman and Palma were arrested, the Arellano Felix clan had no equals. They made a pact with the Caro Quintero clan in Sonora, the Milenio Cartel (the Valencia brothers) in Michoacán, as well as alliances in Colima, Jalisco and Oaxaca that allowed them to dominate the trade from north to south.

After Guzman escaped prison in 2001, a new round of fighting began. In February 2002, Ramon Arellano Felix traveled to Mazatlán to oversee and partake in an attempt on the Sinaloa Cartel’s other force, Ismael Zambada García, alias ‘El Mayo,’ who was eyeing one of the Tijuana Cartel’s prized ‘plazas,’ Mexicali. Zambada, however, got the jump, and his men assassinated Ramon. A month later, Mexican authorities arrested Benjamín. The organization readjusted again. Benjamín made an alliance with the Gulf Cartel’s Osiel Cárdenas Guillén in jail and eyed their common enemy: Guzman.

But numerous arrests in the United States and the extradition of other members to the United States to face charges shifted the balance in favor of the increasingly active US law enforcement agents on both sides of the border. Mexican authorities captured Francisco Javier in 2006, and Eduardo in 2008. After Eduardo’s arrest, the group split. Fernando Sanchez Arellano, alias ‘El Ingeniero,’ headed up one faction. Sanchez Arellano is the nephew of the former bosses of the cartel. Eduardo Teodoro García Simental, alias ‘El Teo’ or ‘Tres Letras,’ headed up another faction. García Simental sought an alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel. Sanchez Arellano reportedly allied himself with the Zetas. A bloody feud ensued, but following the arrest of García Simental in January 2010, the organization appears to have consolidated again around Sanchez Arellano.

Modus Operandi

An indictment in the San Diego District Court unsealed in July 2010 painted a picture of a sophisticated organization very much in business, with contacts in the Mexican police and government, including control over the liaison between the Baja California Attorney General’s Office and the US government. It also says the group’s extortion and kidnapping rackets are flourishing under the watch of the new boss. The “Enterprise,” as US authorities called it in the indictment, has a multi-layered organization that insulates its leadership from legal prosecution. Evidence of this is in the US indictment itself: While the US call it the Sanchez Arellano Organization, Fernando Sanchez Arellano is not indicted. Sanchez Arellano’s mother, Enedina, runs the money side of the business. Two of his uncles remain free but are not wanted by Mexican or US authorities